Stringent environmental regulations that might get even tougher could prevent San Antonio’s homegrown Valero Energy Corp. from expanding in this country, one of its top executives said Wednesday. More »

Families canceling vacations. Fishermen watching their profits burn up along with their boats’ gasoline. Drivers buying only a few gallons of gas at a time because they can’t afford to fill the tank. More »

President Barack Obama’s promise to expedite review of the southern leg of TransCanada Corp. (TRP)’s Keystone XL pipeline won’t speed up the timeline for the project, which already is slated to start construction as soon as June. More »

Exxon Mobil Corp. has made “significant progress” toward resolving an Alaska natural-gas dispute, and more work remains to reach a settlement, David Eglinton, a company spokesman, said in an e-mail. More »

Transocean Ltd. (RIG), the rig operator at Chevron Corp.’s (CVX) $3.6 billion Frade project in Brazil, was spared by the country’s oil regulator in an investigation of a 3,000-barrel oil spill in November. More »

Wooing a nation of increasingly angry motorists, President Barack Obama and his Republican rivals are all plunging into gas-pump politics, seeking the upper hand as energy becomes a driving issue in the election campaign. More »

Vast supplies of domestic natural gas, unlocked by advances in drilling technology, have pushed down prices for the resource to their lowest levels in 10 years, providing a boost to those who argue for its use as a substitute for gasoline in consumer vehicles. More »

President Obama will say Thursday he is directing agencies to do what they can to speed up approval of any federal permits needed to construct the southern leg of the Keystone XL oil pipeline from Cushing, Okla., to the Gulf Coast. More »

Federal prosecutors filed criminal charges against 17 oil company executives on Wednesday for an oil leak in the Atlantic, legal action that has prompted debate about whether it could slow Brazil’s effort to develop its massive offshore finds. More »

Energy Secretary Steven Chu defended his department’s energy policies to Congress on Tuesday after House Republicans released two extensive reports charging that alternative energy loan programs and a huge home weatherization program for poor households were riddled with failures and mistakes. More »

The U.S. Commerce Department plans to slap import tariffs on Chinese-made solar cells in a trade dispute that has strained relations between the two countries and divided the American solar power industry. More »

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